The truth about Gerald Smith : America's no. 1 fascist

'Ifie. 'I'mik About

GERALD SMITH

America s No. 1 Fascist

By Jtal 3>/u*f2e>i

5 GenU

PuUidAed Ly the WoJikenA panty

in

Published by the

WORKERS PARTY

Los Angeles Section

P. O. Box 1246

San Pedro, Calif.

SET UP, PRINTED AND BOUND BY UNION LABOR

Permission is hereby granted to reprint
any or all of the contents of this
pamphlet, with the usual credit line.
Trade unions and progressive organi-
zations availing' themselves of this op-
portunity are requested to mail us
copies of such reprints.

1

■HI

THE TRUTH ABOUT
GERALD SMITH

There is a sign of the times for all to see.

The Nazi power has been defeated in Europe. Mussolini is
a battered corpse in an Italian grave. But in the victor countries
of both America and England, the forces of home-grown Fascism
are lifting their heads with renewed vigor.

In England, No. 1 Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley announces the
reorganization of his frankly Fascist movement. In the Midwest,
ex-Senator Reynolds of North Carolina launches his "Nation-
alist Party" with the backing of Ohio industrialists.

And in California, the leading Fascist demagogue in the
United States pokes his head out of the hole he had crawled
into. He proclaims his intentions of using Los Angeles as the
base for rebuilding a national Fascist outfit.

This is Gerald L. K. Smith.

Fuehrer Smith has announced his invasion of Los Angeles.
He has challenged every jdecent working man and progressive
TnThe city to stop hij> plan's to spread religious and racial hatred
and organize Fascist terrorists.

Now is the time to stop him! The labor and progressive
movement has done it before, .in one city alter another Irani
_which he has been driven .J by aroused opinion and action.

Let us make known to the people of Los Angeles WHO he
is, WHAT he stands for, HOW he works, and WHY he is a
sinister threat to everything we hold dear.

As a contribution to this fight, the Los Angeles section of
the Workers Party presents this expose of Gerald Smith.

Who Is Gerald Smith?

The Rev. Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith is a graduate of the
Hiiey Long machine in Louisiana. Flow he got into it is
interesting.

In the heyday of his power, you may remember, Long-
got himself into a drunken brawl in New York and came back
to Louisiana with a black eye, both physically and morally.
He looked around for a whitewash, and found the pastor of a
wealthy church in Shreveport to do the job.

The Rev. Smith's energies were even then looking for a
sideline. He was a solid success as the glad-handing, fund-rais-
ing minister to the souls of the fashionable rich, but Huey offered
him a bigger job. Smith left the pulpit. He became a leading
hustler and stumper for the notorious "Share-the-Wealth" fakery.

When Huey Long was shot and his empire cracked up,

i la- Long machine made its peace with the Roosevelt administra-
tion and went back to old-fashioned pork-barrel politics in
Louisiana. But not the Rev. Smith.

Huey Long had described Smith as a "better rabble-rouser
than I am." Smith went into the business for himself.

Smith had already been an early member of Pelley's "Silver
Shirts." Unlike Smith today, William Dudley Pelley made no
bones about his out-and-out Fascism, his rabid anti-Semitism and
anti-Negro hatred, or his admiration for Hitler, Mussolini and
their doings. Pelley is now serving 15 years in a federal jail.
Smith learned to be more subtle.

Gerald Smith became member No. 3223 and his wife was
No. 3220. In 1933 he promoted the cause by lecturing on such
topics as "Some Day 100 Million Americans Will Hide Behind
the Silver Shirts for Protection."

On August 15, 1933 Smith wrote to his boss Pelley:
"By the time you receive this letter I shall be on the road to St.
Louis and parts north together with a uniformed squad of young men
composing what I believe will be the first Silver Shirt storm troop in
America." (Carlson, Under Cover.)

When the would-be Fuehrer from Shreveport made his
first independent bid for influence in 1936, he already had behind
him an apprenticeship under two of the most notorious Fascist
gangsters this country has spawned.

In 1936 Smith decided to "take over" the Townsend Old-
Age Pension movement which was then booming.

That year was a high-water mark of the American Fascists.

It was after six years of unemployment and depression,
starvation and bankruptcy in the richest country of the world.
It was after four years of smiling promises by Roosevelt, and
disillusionment with them. There were 17,000,000 unemployed
and the capitalist profit system was grinding gears and sputtering
like the worn-out machine it is. The industrialists of this
country faced a rising sea of discontent. Millions said, "There
must be a change."

With mysterious but plentiful funds shelled out by the
worried coupon-clippers and Fat Boys, Charles E. Coughlin was-
operating a million-dollar Fascist propaganda mill from Michi-
gan. "Democracy is doomed," he stated and "I take the road to
Fascism,"

These well-heeled demagogues were working hard to earn
their pay with the tried Fascist technique: promise pie in the sky,
denounce the labor movement, slander the Jews, bait the Negroes,
capitalize on blindness and prejudice, organize a storm-troop
movement which woidd first bind the people hand and foot
and then deliver them to their paymasters, the capitalist rulers
of the Sixty Families.

This is the job of Fascism for which the masters of profit
pay in cold cash.

_4_

Smith Moves Into Big Time

Gerald Smith tried to move into big time via the Townsend
movement. It had masses behind it. These masses did not see
why the richest country in the world could not afford them an
old-age pension.

They were right. But they did not understand that in the
way of economic security for the people stood capital's greed
for the security of its profits. And that the capitalists had the
power because they owned the wealth of the nation. On top
the Townsend leaders played with the Fascists.

Smith's talents as rabble-rouser at the 1936 Townsend con-
vention got him recognition as a leader in short order. He
dramatically proposed the organization of "Youth Battalions"—
storm troops again. He negotiated with Coughlin and Townsend,
and these Unholy Three got together in a pro-Fascist united front
for the 1936 presidential election, with Lemke as their candidate.

It didn't last long. A united front of rival Fuehrers is ap.t
to be unstable.

Both Townsend and Lemke soon repudiated Smith, and
some dirt came to light in this thieves' falling out. Townsend's
assistant publicly stated that Smith was in the pay of William
Randolph Hearst.

But Smith has maintained his admiration and support for
Coughlin and proclaims it today.

In the latter part of 1936 Smith moved on to Coughlin's
stamping grounds in Michigan and later took over Coughlin's
broadcasts. He had begun as an underling for Huey Long,
worked through a partnership with Townsend and Coughlin,
and now he hung out his own sign. It was called the "Committee
of One Million"— because, he said, "a million" of his friends had
asked him to organize it.

Now Gerald L. K. Smith really had a job. It taxed even
HIS rabble-rousing talents to the full.

For the CIO was organizing all over Michigan and the
Midwest. It was organizing the workers in auto, steel, rubber,
machinery— most of them into unions for the first time.

It was reaching into the robot factories where workers were
whipped on to belt-line speed and then flung on the scrapheap
of unemployment like empty pea-pods. The backbone of the
American working class was striking for a living wage. They were
"sitting down"— and winning!

The bosses were yelling "Red" and "Communist" till the air
stank of red herring. Even Ford was being cracked! Ford's per-
sonnel manager, Harry Bennett, commanded a private army of
goons, scabs, provocateurs and stool-pigeons, but was barely
stemming the tide.

-5-

Mum—— '

Smith — Piece-Rote Strike-Breaker

From 1937 to 1939 this was Gerald Smith's job.

He worked as a barnstorming strike-breaker at piece-work

rate*- , ,„ i

He went from city to city especially where there was labor

trouble" (as the sweatshoppers called it).

"Industrialists found him dependable. If a community was plagued
wih sit-down strikes. Smith could go in with his gospel of Americanism
and the old-time religion and gel results that pleased those who lured
him The CIO picketed the meetings, then hissed and booed and

tried to break them up." (American Mercury, Aug. 1912, art. by
VV. B. Hide.)

He didn't tell then, a living wage was ungodly. No he was
for social justice too-some day! But he pounded the pulpit and
shouted and Bible-quoted and t.sed every demagogic appeal he
had learned from two masters to convince them that strikes were
un-American, trade union organizers were anti-Chnsts, their
bosses were misunderstood angels and any way they had to go
back to work.

Patriotism and religion-flag waving and the Bible-these
are the symbols which Smith warps to his devilish use.

He has described himself in his own words as a "pulpit-
pounding, Bible-reading grass-roots American." This is his
formula for rabble-rousing and strike breaking.

Do you know any good folks who have said that Gerald
Smith is "merely a crackpot" and that "decent people should
just ignore him"? Then remember .that this Fascist strike-breaker
was considered by the Detroit corporations as one of their most
effective anti-labor weapons. He got results. His poison acted
where police clubs failed.

"Many of the lesser industrialists around Detroit make no attempt
lo deny their contributions to Smith. 'Sure, I've given Smith money,'
one of them said. 'Most of us have given him money out here. When
the Reds drove this town crazy, Gerald Smith was the one man who
could get results fighting them . . . Smith knew something to do; he
did it; and we paid him for it.' " (American Mercury.)

In these prosperous days, Smith's "Committee of One
Million" had a weekly "take" of $5000 from industrialists. Harry
Bennett later even publicly admitted paying for some of Smith's
radio broadcasts. Smith could afford a bodyguard at $100 a week.
Bennett's strong-arm men (which the Ford Go. jokingly
called its Service Department) were on guard at the anti-CIO
rallies which Smith held for Ford workers all over Michigan.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the powerful New York
Times had him in lunch conference with the Times executives.
Lowell Thomas presented him at the exclusive Advertising Club.
James H. Rand (anti-labor specialist of the Remington-Rand
team) took a fond and no-doubt financial interest in him.

-6-

"•WfWSi

The former fashionable Shreveport preacher and Huey Long
henchman was getting up in the world.

The War Hits Smith

With the outbreak of the war in 1939 Smith took to preach-
ing a rabid isolationism of the most nationalistic variety.

He boasted of his intimacy with the isolationist bloc
in Congress, certainly with some truth. He told reporters that
several Congressmen often consulted with him. Reynolds and
Nye wrote letters of praise for his magazine The Cross and the
Flag.

But isolationism never paid off like strike-breaking. There
just wasn't as much money in it.

And after Pearl Harbor business was even worse. With the
no-strike pledge on, Smith's special services were not as urgently
needed any longer. The industrialists took care of things more
easily, what with the War Labor Board, federal troops and
union officials on hand.

Smith did get leads to a number of isolationist organiza-
tions which decided to disband after the entrance of America into
the war. He contacted their members and tried to reorganize
them behind himself. As he demonstrated from his files to
Walter Davenport of Colliers, about 30 of the 65 groups were
the kind with "Mother" in their title: Blue Star Mothers, the
Mothers of Sons Forum, Mother's Knee Inc., True American
Mothers With Outstretched Arms, and so on.

In 1942 he started his magazine, The Cross and the Flag.
His floor of offices in the Industrial Bank Building in Detroit
was -handling a national correspondence. He was attempting
to take over Coughlin's heritage in the area and 'partly suc-
ceeded, no doubt. He tried to push the organization of his
"cells" in other Midwestern states. After running a poor race
for the Republican senatorial nomination in Michigan, he tried
to make a splurge in the 1944 presidential election. He began
by booming Lindbergh, Reynolds and Col. McCormack of the
reactionary Chicago Tribune for the Republican nomination,
but wound up running himself as the "America First Party"
candidate.

But with all this cost and energy he was getting nowhere,
and least of all right in his home base, Detroit and Michigan.
"He has .a small group of women who are ardent Smith fans,
and he probably has some backing from the remnants of Father Coughlin's
supporters. But with the end of his radio broadcasts and the demise of
his Committee of One Million, his financial backing also has apparently
dwindled. He still maintains offices in the Industrial Bank Building,
but where his staff once numbered a score or more of persons, it now
has shrunk to four or five young girls and an office manager . . .
The political cards are stacked against any comeback he might attempt
here." (N. Y. Times, Apr. 23, 1941.)

-7-

1

MMMIMB — — — — — —

Notice that word "here". That means in the Detroit area.
The people of Los Angeles should be interested to know
why Detroit got too hot for him.

Detroit Labor Stopped Smith!

It was accomplished in Detroit because Detroit is a strong-
hold of trade unionism. Its labor movement u among the
most militant in the country. Labor took the lead among
all progressives in exposing his poison and smearing him as an
apostle of race hatred. Their indignation overflowed. More than
once, his sheets had to report as they did only last March: "The
crowd assembled in face of stink bombs, stone throwing,
window-breaking opposition and listened to a stirring address by
Mr. Smith." Every decent American can understand how Detroit
labor, which knew him best, was provoked.

1 If the strike-breaking record of Gerald Smith was not fresh

in their minds, the infamous Detroit race riots of June 1943 were.
This was a deliberately organized pogrom upon the Negro

, people, one of the most shameful of recent years.

Bands of white youths roamed through the main streets and

invaded the Negro neighborhoods of Detroit, looking for colored

j victims-beating, clubbing, maiming and killing. Thirty-four

! were slain, of whom twenty five were Negroes. Policemen stood

around grinning or turned their backs. Hundreds were injured.

} Negro housing projects like Sojourner Truth were attacked. The

•' stench of race hatred hung over the city. Cries were heard from

some of the fascist scum: "The Jews are next!"

/ Everybody knew that this was a deliberately organized

i bloodbath. Who were the Hitlerite fiends who were behind it?

Fourteen labor, liberal and progressive national organiza-
I dons publicly accused Gerald L. K. Smith of instigating the

pogrom.

Smith denied it— but he could not deny that the crimes
were worst in the districts where the bulk of Goughlin's and
Smith's strength lay.

Smith denied it— but spilled some beans. He publicly de-
fended himself against the accusation by stating that, though
HE didn't do it, he knew who did, and would give the name to
the authorities. HE NEVER DID. He also never explained where
his inside information about the conspiracy came from.

Detroit labor, white and colored, would not believe him if
he placed his bloody hands on a stack of Bibles. They know
Smith. That is why they sometimes became noisy at his Fascist
rallies, as we have seen.

All this is why Gerald L. K. Smith went west.

msm.

Smith Invades California

His first stop was San Francisco and the United Nations
Conference there. But San Francisco is the strongest union
town on the Coast. He couldn't even get a hall to hold a
meeting in.

So on to Los Angeles. As this is written, Smith has already
held a series of rallies and organizing meetings in this city. He
has announced his immediate goal.

It is: A FASCIST COALITION, tying together the native
Hitlerite grouplets and anti-Semites and Negro-haters, all the
reactionary elements of the pension-plan bugs, money cranks,
fundamentalists, and labor-baiters, The LEADER is to be
Gerald Smith.

Who is behind him in California?

Check— Willis and Lawrence Allen, the bosses of the "Ham
'n' Egg" organization, which polled a large vote just before
the war broke on the basis of its slogan of Thirty Dollars Every
Thursday. The "Ham 'n' Egg Hall" is the site of Smith's secret
organizing confabs. It is clear that the Allen brothers have made
a deal with Smith and lined up with the Fascists.

Check— The disreputable Jonathan Perkins who was the go-
between for Smith and the Ham-'n'-Egg Aliens— and is the author
of anti-Semitic pamphlets and articles of the usual pattern.

Check— The "We the Mothers" organization, another one of
the Fascist outfits for women.

Check— A couple of local anti-Semitic pastors, J. A. Lovell
and Robert Shuler, who have been working away at Jew-baiting
for years.

Check— Meade McLanahan, city councilman from the 13th
District, who is acting as Smith's hall renting agent.

This is a partial list of those who are out in the open.
Labor must smoke out the rest.

Gerald Smith has set himself an ambitious scheme which is
filled with dynamite. If he gains his objectives, let the labor
movement beware!

The Fight Against Smith Starts

Smith's first organizing meeting at the Embassy Auditorium
was attended by about 1500. Liberal author Carey McWilliams,
writing in the New York newspaper PM, noted that "there were
no demonstrations and no picket lines" at this launching meeting.
At his next rally at the Philharmonic Auditorium, attended this
time by 3000, he did not get through so easily.

When Smith announced this first big rally in the downtown
area for June 25th, we Socialists of the Workers Party said
that action against this spreader of Fascist poison was necessary.

Trade unions and progressive organizations had sent in a

-9-

\

flood of resolutions and protests to the city government and to
the Philharmon ic against the meeting. But while Smith has been
refused meeting halls and frozen out of city after city (Minne-
apolis, Buffalo, San Francisco, Milwaukee were a few), he had
reckoned better in Los Angeles.

It is significant that the Philharmonic management made

-10-

CARRYING PLACARDS declaring "Smith Stands for Poll Tax and Jim
Crow," "America First is U.S. Fascism," "Our War is Against Fascism
at Home," and calling upon labor to "Unite Against Fascism," a picket
line estimated at close to 1000 paraded in front of the Philharmonic
auditorium Monday night protesting a meeting held there by Gerald
L. K. Smith, head of America First. Tension was high as men and women,
colored and white people marched back and forth shouting their opposi-
tion to Smith and fascism. Most of the marchers were workers. The
demonstrators spilled over into Pershing Square across the street. Partisans
of Smith refrained from provocative acts. Police dispersed the crowd after
the meeting at the auditorium, which had been arranged by Meade
McClanahan, councilman from the 13th district. Mr. McClanahan is
learned to have signed the lease for Smith. Smith, in addition to being
the leader of America First, is a former member of the Silvershirts, a
follower of Father Coughlin of Detroit, and at one time is known to
have worked closely with Huey Long. According to reliable informa-
tion, he is attempting to establish a base of operations in Los Angeles,
and reports indicate that he is seeking to make Los Angeles his national
headquarters. The demonstration before the Philharmonic auditorium
was sponsored by the Workers Party.

PICTURES AND CAPTIONS by courtesy of

LOS ANGELES SENTINEL, June 28, 1945

him lay down several bonds in anticipation of possible damage to
the building. But the meeting went on.

The Workers Party took action. There was going to be a
picket line at the Philharmonic!

A call was distributed in mass at the industrial plants;
the CIO and AFL unions were urged to throw their strength
in; other Socialist groups were asked to work together on it.

But the trade union officials had not yet reacted to the

-11-

dimmer. Pink Socialists were willing to talk against Fascism bui
could not lie gotten oil the dime when it was a question ol
taking action. The Communist Political Association was too
busy with its current line of being "respectable" and super-
patriotic and talking about increased production and "national
unity" to do anything that smacked of militancy.

On a smaller scale there was being repeated the story of
how the labor movement of Germany sat back while Hitler
gathered his forces, or passed resolutions while he drove to
power, or counselled patience and reliance on the government
while he became bolder.

But at this first rally in Los Angeles, Smith's supporters DID
have to scurry past the singing, shouting, militant picket line or-
ganized by the Workers Party. While a hundred fifty picketed
with anti-fascist banners and slogans, a demonstration of several
hundred more workers booed the Fascists and applauded the
picket line. Passing workers stopped, found out what was going
on and joined the line. Their own trade unions should have been
the ones to call them out!

Across the street in Pershing Square' after the demonstration,
speakers of the Workers Party urged them to go back to their
unions and lodges and organizations and rally them for con-
certed action against the Fascist fuehrer.

When Smith held a smaller organization meeting that same
week at the Ham 'n' Egg Hall, the picket line was there again.
And though smaller, this was in some respects even more effec-
tive. Several times Smith had difficulty controlling his audience
from rushing to the windows or whispering excitedly about what
was going on outside. It was even hard to hear HIS booming
voice at times.

Labor Must Answer The Challenge

But these picket lines are only a token of the fight to which
labor's organizations must be aroused! While it is natural that
a fighting Socialist organization, such as the Workers Party is,
should show the initiative when the trade unions do not respond,
yet—

Burn these words into your mind:

Only the aroused action of the Los Angeles labor movement,
CIO and AFL, can drive these Fascists out of the city! And we
must do it NOW, before Fuehrer Smith secures a bridgehead,
while his organization is in its first stages. It is up to you, and
you, and YOU in the trade unions!

As we go to press Smith is preparing for his biggest rally
to date at the Shrine Auditorium (7,000 seating capacity). Answer-
ing the challenge, the Los Angeles Council of the CIO has called

-12-

for a counter-rally at a larger auditorium, the Olympic, and is
enlisting the support o£ other union, liberal, progressive and anti-
fascist groups. This is a great stride forward in building a broad
United Front of Action against Smith. Its aim must be to answer
Smith's future rallies with mass education and mass action-
militant picket lines and labor rallies!

Gerald Smith's answer to the picket line was typical. With
the brazen gall that amazes decent people, he told his audience
that the Negro brothers on the picket line were there because
they were paid ten dollars by Rabbi Edgar Magnin!

Do you recognize this? Why does he pick on the Negro
picketers to lie about? If he has to invent a face-saving slander,
why does he ring in as villain a Jewish rabbi who had no more
connection with the demonstration than George Washington?

Smith Spreads Race Hate

Gerald Smith says he is against race hatred— when he has to
say something about it. But the mark of the beast is un-
mistakable. He bellows that what we need is a "Christian Amer-
ica," a "Christian government," "Christian patriotism," with a
none-too-subtle version of the anti-Semitism and racism without
which no Fascist demagogue has a complete line of wares.

According to the magazine Current History for October,
1936, Smith in that year sponsored a movement to boycott
the Jewish merchants of New Orleans. It failed only because
the reorganized Long machine did not go for it.

He interlards every speech with anti-Semitic jibes. They
used to be more veiled. Mark this: it is a fact that especially his
closed meetings in Los Angeles have been more crudely and
vilely few-baiting even than his wont. As this pamphlet goes to
press, his very latest one at the Ham V Egg Hall was largely
turned into an anti-Semitic tirade! Here is this self-styled
"Christian" at work on July 16, speaking to his "faithful":

"I have been accused of saying that 95% of OI'A violations are by
Jews. I never said that. It is probably not more than 92!»%."

"Obscenity is a natural characteristic of the Jews."

"The Jews maintain a Gestapo to spy on me arid other Christian
Americans."

"When I see an evil-smelling, long-nosed, bearded, filthy Jew reek-
ing of body odor and call him a 'kike', am I being anti-Semitic?"

"They're still ,the Christ-killers . . . The Jews put pressure on the
Roman government to crucify Christ."

"The CIO council is a Jewish-Communist group."

"The Jews are largely not descended from the Israelites of the Bible.

-13-

They arc sprung from a tribe of roving bandits."

"One day," he has said, "someone will write a book about
how to make an anti-Semite. It will be the story of my life."

This is the man who denies that he is a Jew-baiter! He denied
that he had incited the Detroit racial pogrom— but he begins to
stir up the hornet's nest of anti-Negro prejudice at his very first
big rally in Los Angeles. It can be predicted with scientific pre-
cision that if he stays in this area long enough, we will be hearing
from him about the Mexican people also.

Race hatred is a favorite weapon of these Fascist rabble-
rousers because it is a device to pit one section of labor against
another. Divide and rule! Let the discontented take out their
anger on racial minorities, and Big Business is safe. This is why
Labor must build unite its forces regardless of race, color, and
religious or political creed.

But before! our indignation runs away with us at this
.spectacle of warped hate and hideous lies, let us make a sober
estimate of what Smith is. Me has been called a crackpot.
He has been called a purveyor of "foreign isms." He has been
called a Fascist. And he is.

But we should be very clear about our understanding
of these accusations. We must understand him in order to fight
him effectively.

Is Smith a "Crackpot"?

In the first place, it is a grave mistake to put him down
as "merely a crackpot" because of the kind of raving rant which
is his specialty on the platform. That, is His technique. As a
matter of fact, Smith has often referred to himself as a "rabble-
rouser." It means a demagogue who tries to sweep an audience
into hysterical emotion without thought. He is as proud of that
special skill as a machinist is of his control of the lathe. To take
one example only, he has told an interviewer:

"I'm an isolationist. I'm the organizer ami leader of the America
First Party. Oil, I'm a rabble-rouser. Put that down— a rabble-rouser.
God made me a rabble-rouser. Goil made me a rabble-rouser of and for

the Right. Better spell that word Right with a capital R. . ." (Colliers,
Mar. 4, 19-14.)

In speaking, he lashes his 220 pounds into a fury of shout-
ing, hysterical denunciations, emotional appeals and vivid
phrases, till he is bathed in sweat and his enormous expenditure
of energy has prevented the hearer from remembering that he is
saying nothing at all.

It is a technique. He has found that it works. Remember that.

A crackpot? A warped reactionary mind— yes. But that is why
he Is dangerous.

- 14-

It was a crackpot like Smith, with the same technique, who
seized power in Germany, launched his bloody terror and made
good his threat that "heads will roll in the street." Hitler was
called a "crackpot" by millions of good people— who understood
nothing of what he was getting at. Mussolini was contemptuously
called a posing buffoon. Their work was made easier because
of the people who sneered and said "Pay no attention."

In the second place, don't be fooled by your own words
when you refer to Smith's ideas as a "foreign ism." It is perfectly
true that Smith is an ape-like imitation of Adolf Hitler. It is
perfectly true that we are used to thinking of Fascism as existing
somewhere overseas but not here in this country.

But don't try to base a real understanding of Smith on the
belief that he is merely a stooge of foreign Fascism. The CIO
Council has rightly called for an investigation of Smith, but.
don't be too disappointed if he turns out to have had no
direct foreign connections. As a matter of fact, Smith has already
been investigated three times, and the F.B.I, is reported to have
been unable to find any evidence of any substantial link with
Nazism or foreign influence.

For Smith really IS NOT essentially an agent for any foreign
Fascism. He looks for support not from abroad but from the
ruling Sixty Families of this country's plutocracy. He counts on
them to put him into power. He is the "Made in U. S.", dyed-in-
the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle, home-grown, native AMERICAN
variety of Hitlerite!

The field for Fascism is a fertile one in this country. The
soil has been tilled: The same moneyed interests are here to
further it in their own interests. The defeat of Hitler in Europe
changes none of that.

What Does Smith Count On?

In the third place, don't expect Gerald Smith to come right
out with it and label himself a Fascist. Especially now. The word
is discredited for public consumption.

It was his teacher Huey Long who said that when Fascism

came to the United States, it would come in the guise of being
opposed to Fascism. And he knew. That was what he was trying
to do.

Smith's name for it is "Christian Nationalism." Every decent
member of the church will proclaim that it is no more "Christian"
than Hitler "national socialism" was Socialist,

But get behind the name. Look at the thing itself. Learn to
recognize its innermost nature.

See it mirrored in Gerald L. K. Smith.
-15-

Smith once told a reporter: "You know what my ambition is?
I think chaos is inevitable. I want to get to as many people as
1 can now, so that when chaos comes, I'll be leader." (Nation,
July 25, 1936.)

Leader of what? Leader of— chaos?

Perish the thought-get wise to Smith. He made this state-
ment in the 193()'s when even solid bankers' magazines and
Wall Street organs were talking fearfully of the danger of
"revolution" and the breakdown of the profit system. In their
dictionary this is always called "chaos".

Today once again, even before the war boom is over,
the capitalist class is fearfully quaking before the prospect of the
terrible crisis that shapes up for the profit system as soon as the
shooting ends.

The depression that ravaged the world for ten years from
1929 to 1939 was temporarily lifted only by the outbreak of
war. Capitalism went from mass starvation to mass slaughter.
The profitable markets that could not be found for a surplus of
goods and capital, though millions were in dire need— were found
on the battlefields. Now they know that peace under capitalism
will mean 20,000,000 unemployed.

This is what Smith is waiting for.

Capitalism will have to deal with a working class that was
told to sacrifice its all, and that will lie rewarded with breadlines.
They will strike out for a living wage and jobs.

They will say, "We were told to 'work or fight.' Now if you
don't let us work on your idle machines— WE WILL FIGHT—
FOR OURSELVES THIS TIME!"

In such a crisis, in peril of their profits, capitalism moves
to put the labor movement in a straight-jacket. It tries to tie
labor hand and foot, so that the parasites who live by owning
can suck the last life-giving ounces of profit out of our labor
without resistance.

This straight-jacket is fascism.

The Road to Fascism

The trick is to get it on the body of labor. That is where the
Fascist demagogue comes in. The Fords and Morgans and
Duponts cannot do it themselves. They are a handful.

They need the mass organization of blindly rebellious,
hypnotized, hopped-up followers of a well-paid Fuehrer— fol-
lowers especially recruited among despairing middle-class people,
youth without a future, and unemployed willing to be regimented
for a square meal. The capitalists provide the money.

They are told to destroy this "democracy" which is starving
them, destroy the trade union movement, destroy all independent

-16-

organization as all independent thought. And when it is done
the same Sixty Families are sitting on top of the straight-jacketed
nation, going through their pockets.

This is what happened in Germany, to the letter. This is
what Smith is organizing for here.

It is only doing on a bigger scale exactly what he did for
Ford and other tycoons from 1937 to 1939.

That is what Fascism is— the capitalist answer to "chaos."
It is the steel hoop which they put around the rotting barrel of
the profit system.

Gerald Smith stands four-square for that profit system.
"Public ownership? Not in anything!" he has said. "I'd rath'.T
that a municipality didn't even own the town pump. It would
be better in private hands. Even the police department and the
fire department. I' mean it, everything." (Current Biography,
1943.)

The Socialist Answer

We Socialists stand for the OTHER way out of capitalist
chaos— the way of Plenty for All.

Our factories and plants can produce Plenty, for All. This
is not a dream any more. It is a solid fact.

But they will not be so used as long as they are owned by
private profiteers, who allow us to work on THEIR machines
only as long as they can make a profit out of our toil.

The working class must own and control these factories
and plants if the products of THEIR LABOR are to be THEIRS.
Socialists fight for a Workers Government which will take the
means of production back for the people.

This is ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY-that is, SOCIALISM.
Without it, political democracy is doomed. Without political
AND economic democracy, working men are SLAVES.

THAT IS WHY SOCIALISTS ARE THE FIRST AND
FIERCEST ENEMIES OF THE FASCIST SCUM.

The Workers Party is the Socialist organization of American
labor WHICH MEANS BUSINESS. We mean to push the fight
against the black threat of Fascism through every channel
and every method.

THAT CAN BE DONE ONLY THROUGH ABROAD
UNITED FRONT OF ALL LABOR AND ALL PROGRES-
SIVE ORGANIZATIONS WHICH W LL ^NCLNTRATE
, OUR STRIKING STRENGTH ON THE FASCIS1 ENEMY.
This means AFL and CIO and Railway Unions together,
trade unionists and Socialists together-all labor putting aside
other differences and disputes to smash the fascists back!

_17_

1

That's point No. 1: WORKERS' UNITY.

Smith and his friends are openly talking again of storm
troops, in Los Angeles. They are serious about it. They will start
with uniformed bodyguards and "color guards" and other de-
vices. Their aims are those of Hitler's— physical assault on the
organizations of labor and terror against all progressives and
racial minorities.

The greatest mistake the labor movement can make, in
which it would be following footprint for footprint in the steps
of the German trade unions, would be merely to say: Let the
cops and the courts take care of these rowdies; we will limit
ourselves to protests and indignant speeches.

Point No. 2 is: LABOR MUST DEPEND ON ITS OWN
STRENGTH.

Labor must build its own defense guards.

Labor must answer' the fascist storm-troops in the only
language they know. It must protect labor meetings. It must not
wait till Smith has gone too far. It must act INSTANTLY
on the first sign of Fascist violence. It must be READY.

Labor must depend on its own strength. Its own industrial
strength and its own political strength.

The Workers Party tells you that the LESSON OF GER-
MANY AND ITALY is:

The profit system's government will not stop the Fascist
assault on labor when things get hot. Pressure on the capitalist
politicians will not WIN the fight against Fascism.

Labor must BE the government. Labor must strive for ITS
OWN government. To this end it must organize ITS OWN
INDEPENDENT POLITICAL ACTION, not merely as a tail
on the Democratic or Re2mblican kites, but in ITS OWN
INDEPENDENT LABOR PARTY!

A UNITED FRONT OF ACTION-INDUSTRIAL AND
POLITICAL-IS THE SECRET OF VICTORY AGAINST
THE FASCIST MONSTER.

It is also the secret of the emancipation of the working
class from this whole round of insecurity, fascist threats and
slaughterous wars, IT CAN GO FORWARD TO A WORKERS'
WORLD OF PEACE AND PLENTY!

This is .the Workers Party's program. If you are for it,
DO YOUR PART! Fight with us for real democracy and free-
dom, for this is the fight for the SOCIALIST WORLD OF
ECONOMIC ABUNDANCE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY!

-18-

JOIN US IN THE FIGHT AGAINST
FASCISM AND FOR SOCIALISM!

I want to find out more about the Los Angeles Section
of the Workers Party, which organized the picket lines
against Smith's meetings.

Send me more literature.

Send me 'notices about your meetings.

Tell me how I can join the Workers Party.

Moil to:
Workers Party
Los Angeles Section
P. C*. Box 1246
San Pedro, Calif.

Your Name

Address

City and Zone

m

READ THE SOCIALIST PRESS
LABOR ACTION

A weekly socialist newspaper with hard-hitting
articles on the war and its profiteers, the trade
unions, the Negro people, the imperialist intrigues
of the Big Powers, and the fight for Socialism.

NEW INTERNATIONAL

A monthly magazine with analytical reviews of
socialist theory and practice.

PLENTY FOR ALL by Ernest Lund

A basic booklet on socialism. Read it to find out
why capitalism cannot give the workers Plenty
for All but only wars, depressions, and fascism.
Find out how a socialist society would create
Plenty for All.

The Workers Party
114 West 14th Street
New York 1 1 , New York

I want you to send me the items checked below:
LABOR ACTION:

35c for 6 months' subscription.

60c for 1 year's subscription.
- NEW INTERNATIONAL:

$1 .50 for 1 year's subscription.
PLENTY FOR ALL:

1 0c per copy.

Further information about the Workers Party.

Name .-.

Street

City and Zone

Money Enclosed

ftp

Request Date: 15-FEB-2010

Expiration Date: 18-FEB-2010

ILL Number:

j*'/ A,j

IjU

II

ILL Number: 3711813

Call Number: N/A 0^616 A(V 14 ' £
Format: Monograph ^~ °

Author: Draper, Hal.

Title: The truth about Gerald Smith : America's
no. 1 fascist /

Pub. Place: San Pedro, Calif. : Workers Party, Los
Angeles Section, [1945?]

Requester: TEXAS STATE UNIV-SAN MARCOS -
Interlibrary Loan

TGQ or OCLC #:

TGQ or OCLC #: 62635775
ID: TXI

ISBN/ISSN:

Address: 64 SATvia

TEXpress/AlkekLibrary/Interlibrary
Loan/Texas State University-San
Marcos/601 University Drive/San Marcos,
TX 78666

Service Type: Loan
Max Cost: USD50
Payment Type: IFM

Patron Name: Wright, Jonathan
Patron e-mail:
Service Level:
Delivery Method: Library Mail

Request Note: FAX/ARIEL:512-245-3002/Ariel

147.26.108.32 OCLC Req. Ex. Source:
ILLiad
Need by Date: 14-MAR-2010
Verification Source: <TN:204051><ODYSSEY:147.26.110,59/ILIfiopyright Compliance

OCLC
Supplier Reference:

Supplier Reference: ILLNUM:62635775
Owned By:

Requester Symbol: OCLC:TXI

Return To: ILL SHIELDS LIBRARY / UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS / 100 N.W.
QUAD / DAVIS CA 956 16-5292 / U.S.A./
ARIEL: 169.237.75. 50 /FAX
530-752-7815/
shieldsinterloan@ucdavis.edu